Cultural Zionist leaders, both pre and post WW1, struggled with assimilation.  Their view of Yiddishkeit, almost totally overshadowed by Xtian theological narishkeit.  The latter, compares to an Indian summer, a dying religion, gasping in the throes of death, which attempted a kind of brief restoration of ‘spiritual health’, something comparable to the ‘Battle of the Bulge’. Nazi barbarism exposed the foundation of Xtian cruelty and lies, humanity now strives to cast this bloody rag upon the dunk heaps of history, together with the mythical Gods of Mt. Olympus.

Franz Rosenzweig, author of the philosophical work: “The Star of Redemption”, himself almost converted to that detestable faith.  After the Great War, despite poor health, he worked together with Martin Buber to write a German translation of the T’NaCH.  Poor scholarship assumes that translations of T’NaCH into Bibles serve Jewish interests.  Translations compare to information gleaned; poor folk who search for food, after workers harvest the ripe crops from the fields; they compare to undergraduate students who learn particular subjects, based solely upon translations of original works written in other languages. 

The root problem of translations, they simply cannot define any abstract “foreign” term.  Translating abstruse, recondite, esoteric, and concealed terms into other languages, only further clouds understanding of these translated abstruse, recondite, esoteric and concealed terms.  An example being the translation of ברית unto the alien term “covenant”.  Had any translators of the Xtian Bibles understood the concealed depths of the Torah, they would have never introduced the Spirit Name of HaShem as a word.  Cutting a brit most essentially requires swearing an oath through the Spirit Name of HaShem.  The translation of brit into covenant fails to communicate this absolute and fundamental requirement.

Hence Xtians throughout the Ages have viewed the T’NaCH, comparable to post Ghetto reform Jewish rabbis who declared the T’NaCH and Talmud as archaic, they called the T’NaCH, their ‘Old Testament’.  But neither T’NaCH nor Talmud teach history, both reveal the Cohen spirituality of faith.  And neither Xtian theologians nor assimilated cultural Zionist philosophers, possessed an education, not in T”NaCH, nor in Talmud, nor in Midrash, nor in Siddur.  Neither Xtian priest or assimilated Jew possessed the basic education required to enable them to distinguish and discern tefilla from prayer. 

Worlds separate talking [about] a subject, as opposed to talking [through] that same subject.  Both this and that – theological declarations of Creed and faith and assimilated Jewry – compare to a poor man, standing outside a Jewish window on shabbot, begging for food – as discussed in the opening Mishna of Shabbat.  Words talk about Human shapes & forms of Man; but spirits breath the life force substance through Man.  A basic yet fundamental distinction which forever separates reactionary newspapers knowledge rhetoric, from depth analysis research which learns based upon a disciplined employment, a comparison\contrast logic format.

Both Rosenzweig and Buber serve as prime examples of the secular Haskalah movement of the late 19th Century.  Haskalah favored and promoted an environment of civic responsibility, it promoted the cultivation of literature and arts, worshiped by the dominant German culture of Bismarck’s empire.  Torah observance of commandments, mitzvot, and halachot ceased to stir the soul of these assimilated Jews.  Rosenzweig, like Marx before him, pursued the study of Hegel’s philosophical and political ideas.  As his thoughts matured, Rosenzweig rejected German Idealism, Hegel’s notions of the supremacy of the nation state history, over the destiny of individuals who lived within a larger national society.

These group-think, belief system theologies vs. artistic creative mentalities, they have divided theological Creeds from mussar revelation of awareness, throughout the Ages.  This gulf of separation between 2 fundamentally opposing ideas, most probably prevented Rosenzweig from embracing and converting to Xtianity.  Nonetheless, recreating the wheel – what a waste of time.  The genius of Rosenzweig could not independently duplicate the T’NaCH/Talmud wisdom, passed down through the Ages from Rabbis to talmidim who study together the sealed masoret.  Rosenzweig’s philosophy turned and leaned toward the lines of the existentialist philosophers of Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Sartre, and Nietzsche, while still striving to maintain a Jewish identity.

As his philosophy matured he examined the Neo-Kantian school in philosophy, as promoted by the German-Jewish thinker Hermann Cohen, which emphasized “pure” thought and ethics rather than metaphysics.  Cohen in his latter years would reduce the level of importance which the secular philosophical ethic of Kant emphasized.  His last work, published after his death: Die Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (1919; Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism), Cohen shifted emphasis from a man-centered to God-centered concept of priority. 

Both men as they aged struggled with a profound Jewish identity crisis.  This Jewish identity crisis, perhaps it defines the mental hoops which all three of these Jewish philosophers attempted to jump through.  Assimilated Jewry living today too struggles with our own identity crisis. We too strive to jump through hoops which define our relationships and society with and among our own people.

Later Buber would reject as impractical Jewish identification with any belief based theologies about G-d. As a secular assimilated Jew, the notion supported by Goyim theologies, Buber developed a viewpoint concerning the existence of G-d, as something “OUTSIDE” of Man. This foreign assimilationist notion, it shaped the conclusions which matured into his I-Thou philosophy. Clearly Buber but superficial knowledge, he never explored the Torah oath brit faith. To his assimilated mind, the term brit meant covenant. Specifically he never weighed the oath which Avram swore to HaShem at the brit cut between the pieces.

Buber, like most rabbis, traditional, masorti, reform etc, had no awareness of the פרדס logic system whereby Rabbi Akiva defined the Oral Torah revelation at Horev. In like and equal measure, Buber, like most rabbis, etc, had no awareness of the role of tohor as the יסוד of the chosen Cohen seed of Avraham! As such, his secular cultural Zionist philosophy had but only a slight impact influence upon traditional observant Jewry’s perception of how Yidden view themselves and our relationship with HaShem. Defined as: the Spirit of the Name of HaShem, consequent to the sworn oath brit, the Spirit of the Name lives within the hearts of the chosen Cohen nation. The only people who accepted the revelation of the Torah at Sinai; this Spirit Name judges the contest and struggle within the hearts of the chosen brit Cohanim people, which Rabbi Yechuda HaNassi referred to as Yatzir HaTov vs. Yatzir HaRah in a Mishna of ברכות.

Buber, like most rabbis etc, had no knowledge of the k’vanna of sanctifying the awareness of the finger of HaShem within our lives, as expressed through the mitzva known as kre’a shma, and within every page of the Talmud. He, like most rabbis etc, did not realize that the theology, known as monotheism, that it fundamentally negates both the 2nd Commandment of the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, and the oath brit sworn at Gilgal in the days of the prophet Yehoshua. Which the order of parchments within the Rashi tefillen eternally validates as essential to the lives of Torah observant Jewry.

Buber, like most rabbis etc, had no conscious awareness of דרך ארץ, the dedication of Torah defined tohor middot unto HaShem, as the יסוד upon which defines the basic k’vanna of tefilla. Just how can an I-Thou relationship exist if man, the lessor life force in the I-Thou relationship, has no knowledge how to da’aven to HaShem; within the brit boundaries defined by the prophets, known as tefillah? Buber, like most rabbis etc, had no consciousness that this question even exists. Yeshivot across Israel, they have no ability, much less research, other than translating the Siddur into other languages – as if reading words from a prayer-book defines k’vanna – how to study, and even less so, how to interpret the k’vanna required to do any and all positive time oriented commandments.

Cultural Zionism fails in all generations, consequent to the basic issue: Jewish abandonment of our responsibility as the Cohen nation, to accept the opening first two commandments of Sinai as the יסוד of Torah faith. The Talmud teaches the k’vanna of the 1st Sinai commandment as: doing mitzvot לשמה. In the defense of Buber, like most rabbis etc, the opening Gemara of גיטין teaches that g’lut Jewry forsook (herein explains the curse of g’lut) to prioritize the most essential understanding of our faith, how to do mitzvot לשמה.

The Ramban commentary to the Chumash teaches that Jews living in g’lut have no mitzvot observance obligation, comparable to women placing tefillen; g’lut Jewry do mitzvot, in the opinion expressed by the Ramban, not from obedience to Torah commandments, but rather so they do not forget what it actually like to keep and do mitzvot! Visit any Yeshiva across Israel, and ask any “rabbi” to distinguish אל from רחום from חנון etc, and not any of those “rabbis” asked, in any Yeshiva across the country, possess the wisdom to make basic distinctions of fundamental primary terms. The Talmud of Baba Kama calls this disgrace: hanging a mountain by a hair. Something to a “great mathematician” who does not know how to add simple numbers. Have met many Orthodox Jews who adamantly declare, as if such declarations have authority, that the Jewish people in Israel today live in g’lut! Am ha’aretz personages compare to autistic children. They live in their own little world, oblivious to strangers outside of that little world.

That little world, perhaps defined as: “don’t confuse me with the facts … I have my religion”. Comparable to settlers traveling in Conestoga wagons across the prairies. Whenever those amateurs encountered heathen Injuns, those Pius pioneers would circle their wagons, to forge a wall of common defense. The metaphor of circling the wagons against modern secular society: heard it from a Frum New York born, Toldos Aharon, beketche, and shtrelmel wearing Yid. He himself compared Hasidic educational goals to raise their children in the shadow of a vast majority secular society, to the 19th century wagon analogy; their struggles to survive, during the dangerous, barbaric, scalp hunting days, of the extinct old West.

Assimilated and secular, Buber’s cultural Zionism perceived most human relationships from an I -it perspective. Buber, like most rabbis etc, did not understand that the key term brit (בראשית\ברית אש) the Torah defines as an oath sworn alliance which binds not just the individual, but all family members born to that brit individual unto all eternity of time. When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, he did not die alone. The floods in the days of Noach obliterated the soul of Adam, every descendant of Adam died – except for the chosen Cohen seed of Noach. As Yitzak caused Yaacov to inherit the chosen Cohen brit faith, so too Noach caused Shem to inherit the brit faith. As Esau sold his Cohen birthright to Yaacov, Shem, through Melchizedek lost the Cohen inheritance and it passed unto Avraham, when he failed to discern a fundamental priority of faith, to do mitzvot requires doing commandment לשמה. Melchizedek blessed Avraham, and only thereafter did he bless HaShem. Reuven, the firstborn of Yaacov, in his turn would forfeited the big kohuna Cohen status, when he likewise failed to prioritize primary from secondary values. Yosef, he too forfeited the big kohuna Cohen status, when he failed, unlike Moshe our Teacher, to cause Israel to inherit the sworn oath made by Yaacov to Yitzak, to bless as the most essential definition which categorizes the mitzva of tefilla. Therefore, why should Buber, like most of the rabbis etc, not also crash into this same identical error of faith?

Buber, like most rabbis etc, did not comprehend the wisdom, as taught in ברכות, that a blessing requires knowledge to do mitzvot לשמה, and מלכות: the understanding to employ pronoun tohor middot which jump forth from Spirit Name HaShem; this defined korban like dedication of our lives as the brit Cohen peoples’ – our acceptance of the opening first two commandments at Sinai. The dedication of Torah defined tohor middot, known as Torah Sh’Baal Peh, wherein the Cohen nation dedicates our personal walk before HaShem in and through our daily lives, as our eternal atonement for the avoda zara of the Golden Calf, wherein Aaron translated the Spirit of the Name unto a word. This violation, comparable to the strange fire which his two sons would later offer during the Moshiach anointing, not to compare HaShem to anything existent in the Heavens, Earth, or Seas. The latter three categories cannot define tohor Spirits. Words require skill and great precision, and profound mental dexterity, to describe different shades of color which an artist employs. This basic, fundamental complexity compares to asking a small child to describe the feelings felt, which cause him to cry. An experienced bard poet struggles to describe complex emotional shades of grief, fear, anger, shame, worry, or their emotional opposite positive feelings!

Buber, like most rabbis etc, failed to grasp the basic need for Man to emotionally mature – to grow up, and stop behaving as a 60 year old child, whose organ of generation dominates his assimilated thoughts, desires, and passions to live and practice a hedonist lifestyle. But the most damning failure of Bubers’ cultural Zionism, the absolute empty awareness of the need to rule our people, when we struggle and fight against one another, that only justice has the power to assuage feelings of hatred without cause.

Buber, like most rabbis etc, had no awareness of the Talmudic model which prioritized the establishment of lateral Common Law Courts. Which prioritized the need and importance of lateral Courts as the chief means to righteously resolves disputes which threaten to drive the ship of the Zionist state upon the shoals of Civil War destruction. The ultimate definition of all Torah curses, which Israel accepted at Sinai through the 2nd Commandment.

Justice breathes tohor spirits when our leaders accept the yoke responsibility as the fundamental priority of a Jewish State: the obligation to ensure that Jews do not fight Civil War among ourselves. Justice requires a commitment to achieve and prevail intra-bnai brit diplomacy. The issue of Peace, does not involve Arab refugee populations, nor Arab or Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The issue of Peace, revolves around a sole and single axis. Peace breaths tohor spirits when lateral Courts command the police to impose justice, which extinguishes the fires of hatred Jews feel towards one another.

Police have no power nor authority to issue fines. Only the justices of a lateral court bear the yoke of this responsibility, this aspect of justice. Lateral justices never receive any salary from the State. Such salaries constitute as State sanctioned bribes. The police serve as public servants. They receive their salary from the State, on the precondition that the police obey and carry out the commands of the lateral courts. President Jackson, with contempt declared: “Chief Justice Marshal has made his ruling. Now let’s see how he enforces it!”

Lateral common law courts possess the Constitutional priority known as D’varim/Mishna Torah/Legislative Review. The lateral common law courts have the power to not only declare a law established by the Knesset as unconstitutional. But more essential to the point of law, these lateral Sanhedrin common law courts inherit the Constitutional authority to rewrite unconstitutional laws passed by the Knesset Parliament, and impose the Constitutional laws as the law of the land. Torah laws never exist without mussar. Herein defines the moral scope, the power and authority, of revelation of the Torah sh’baal peh at Horev. The tohor middot logic system, פרדס, shapes and determines the k’vanna of all halachot for ever and to all eternity.

Compare ישעיה יז:א – יט:טו – The metaphor of a lion laying down with a lamb and eating grass as do sheep serves as a metaphor. The נמשל interpretation to this משל of poetic license, Israel – unlike the nations – suffers total military defeat and exile, but Israel returns and restores its home rule after g’lut destroyed the nation from off the face of the earth. Wonder and amazement at such a great miracle, the restoration of the Jewish state compares to a child playing with cobras!

Great and mighty empires destroyed the Jewish State in the past. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Roman empires; the USSR and the British empire etc none of these empires having once fallen in defeat has ever returned and restored the past glory of those dead empires.

The Haftorah read on the concluding day of Pesach employs the משל metaphor of ישעיה, by which Neturei Karta denounces the Jewish state. Why did HaShem take Israel out of Egypt? HaShem swore a brit oath that the chosen Cohen seed of Avraham would descend unto g’lut, and from there HaShem would take them, and bring Israel unto the oath sworn lands. The order of Rashi tefillen, stands upon the oath sworn at Gilgal in the days of the prophet יהושע, just as HaShem judged and made war upon the Gods of Egypt, so too HaShem pledged to judge and conduct war upon the Gods of Canaan. None the less, the nations of Canaan did not just mystically disappear and vanish during the lifetime of יהושע. Yet Neturei Karta theology proclaims that they own possess the sole monopoly upon the “truth”; that the coming of some mystical savior will restore the Jewish nation without the necessity of war – defines their Torah True Judaism.

The Oral Torah defines its 8th midda, as meaning “Path”. Each person possesses a unique destiny which defines each persons’ particular life on this earth. Neturei Karta claims that its “truth” determines the destiny of all Jews. But such claims of infallibility Pope Pius XII likewise declared. Religion which seeks to impose “truth” upon others, based solely upon some theological creed of worship, directly compares to avoda zara – the tuma of the 2nd Commandment of the revelation of the Torah at Sinai.

https://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/opposition.cfm

One of my favorites!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uE1xsuEywQ

Talent, its so inspiring and uplifting. The commandment: love your neighbor as yourself … the measure that a person strives to respect their own dignity, in equal measure should they strive to behave toward others. This idea defines עיו טוב a good eye. Likewise – give heart to your family, friends, and people. Herein explains the additional ב in the opening to paragraphs of kr’ea shma: בכל לבבל\כם. Music has this unique power. That’s way armies marching to do battle with the enemy, they marched to the music played by marching bands. Learned at Texas A&M, this military school has a terrific marching band. The graduating seniors wear leather boots as the trade mark of the class of “dying elephants”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqksWMocu5c

The creative expression of Art in some of its many shades of beauty. Enjoy.

http://www.jbuff.com/c011212.htm

Torah commandments no more qualify as judicial legal rulings, than do laws passed by Congress compare to the Constitution of the United States or the Amendments to that Constitution. Middle Class vs. Upper Class fits nicely into Marxist ideology about the “Class Struggle”! The concept of Olam Ha’Bah which this dude calls “Belief in Afterlife”, what a joke. Olam Ha’Bah, the rabbis (the leadership which developed after the Romans invaded Judea – consequent to the internal conflict between brothers Chashmonaim, over who should be king. With the fall of the kingdom to the Roman empire, the rabbis replaced the political P’rushim/Pharisees Party, as the teachers of Oral Torah logic), learn from the brit cut between the pieces. Avram at the time of that oath brit alliance, had no children. He cut that brit upon the oath sworn to him by his God, that his future born seed would compare to the stars in the heavens in its great multitudes, and populations.

The assimilationist Tzeddukim\Sadducees ruled the Banana Republic. Conquered Judea, ruled by a succession of empires, beginning with the Persians, followed by the Greeks, and ending with the Roman Imperial armies. A Banana Republic, a foreign power imposes a care taker government from 2% or less of the conquered population, makes them fabulously rich, while the conquering power rapes the land of its treasures and wealth, and the 98% of the population endures absolute poverty. The Tzeddukim/sadducees (Priest from the House of Aaron), these foreign empires imposed them as the care taker government. With this intent did Cyrus the Great order the construction of the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple served as the seat of the care-taker Sadducee government. The transformation of Judea into a banana Republic permitted Persepolis, the Capital of the Persian empire, to rule its vast empire of conquered nations.

By the time of the Greek empires, the first based in Egypt, and the second based in Syria, the Judean banana Republic, ruled over by the care taker assimilated Sadducees, these “Syrians of the Jewish religion, learned logic based upon Plato and Aristotle rather than the logic which Moshe the prophet taught Israel when he descended from Horev. Moshe derived 611 commandments, based upon the Oral Torah logic system which HaShem revealed to Moshe at Mt. Horev on Yom Kippur.

Christianity assumes that the sum total of the Torah “the law”, exists as the 10 Commandments! Alas the 10 commandmnets never occurred at Sinai! Why then does the Torah include the 10 Commandments? The Torah, like the Talmud, a highly edited text. The Torah defines the term “prophet”, as a person who commands mussar. Mussar: the awareness of the finger of HaShem within our lives. The organization of the revelation of the Torah at Sinai into 10 Commandments, this mussar links the revelation of the Torah at Sinai to the 10 plagues “mussar”, by which HaShem took Israel out of Egyptian slavery. Logic, equally applies to the study of all literature, in all times and Ages. Logic learns by means of making comparison and contrast!

Therefore the assimilated Sadduccees, based upon their total reliance upon the ancient Greek logic formats, they did not possess the means to learn, the resurrection of the dead to the brit cut between the pieces as did the P’rushim/Pharisees. Each logic system format, like all things in this world, has its strengths and weaknesses. The Oral Torah middot logic system, it specifically functions with the sole intent – to interpret the mussar commandments commanded by the prophets throughout time. The ancient Greek logic formats/philosophies have no connection what so ever with Torah prophetic mussar. As a consequence, the assimilated Greek Sadducees lacked the wisdom to learn the mitzva of the resurrection from the dead from the Torah.

The two closely related subjects: resurrection of the dead and world to come concepts – they both learn from the brit cut between the pieces, wherein Avram cut that brit on certain defined terms. The mitzva of קידושין/Jewish marriage, a man acquires the olam habah soul of his wife, meaning he acquires title to all the children that come from this union for all eternity in time. Just as did Avram do the exact same at the brit cut between the pieces. Logic compares to separate ideas, in this case Avram walking between the carcasses of dead animals, compared to a Jewish couple getting married, in order to understand a common denominator k’vanna of intent shared between the two disparent concepts. Jewish common law does the exact same thing by means of understanding the intent of Rabbi Yechuda’s Mishna by bringing legal precedents from other Primary sources of law. Hence the Talmud exists as the authoritative codification of Oral Torah.

Church authorities, to this very day, confuse the form for the substance. Since the codification of the Talmud occurred no less than two millennium after the revelation of the Torah at Sinai. Rav Ashi and Rav Ravina sealed the Sha’s Bavli in about the year 450 CE! Church leadership therefore concluded that the Talmud could not possibly exist as the revelation of the Oral Torah at Horev. But its not the halachot learned within the pages of the Talmud that defines Oral Torah. Rather its the weaving together of Aggadic mussar learned from through פרדס logic format which interprets the Books of the Prophets – their mussar commandments – together with halachic ritual observances which define the culture and customs practiced by the Jewish people who lived in Judea, prior to the Roman expulsion of Jewish refugee populations from the country. Judea ceased to exist after the mass expulsion of these defeated Jewish refugee populations by Roman armies.